Conventional residential and commercial oven appliances generally include a cabinet that defines a cooking chamber for receipt of food items for cooking. Heating elements are positioned within the cooking chamber to provide heat to food items located therein. The heating elements can include, for example, radiant heating elements, such as a bake heating assembly positioned at a bottom of the cooking chamber and/or a broil heating assembly positioned at a top of the cooking chamber.
When cooking certain food items, it may be important to check or monitor the temperature within the cooking chamber, as well as the temperature of the food item, e.g., in order to ensure the food item is adequately cooked. As such, certain oven appliances include a temperature sensor for sensing the temperature within the cooking chamber. For example, the temperature sensor can be a resistance temperature detector (RTD), thermistor, or thermocouple located within a conductive sheath that extends into the cooking chamber. The temperature sensor is typically electrically insulated from the temperature sensor housing. Moreover, certain oven appliances include a probe system that generally includes a wireless temperature probe configured for insertion into a food item for sensing the food item's temperature, an antenna that sends signals to and receives signals from the wireless temperature probe, and a controller in communication with the antenna to interpret the signals such that the food item's temperature may be displayed or communicated to a user. The antenna of such probe systems typically extends into the cooking chamber so that a strong signal path exists between the antenna and the wireless temperature probe.
While such probe systems may accurately detect and display the temperature of food items within the cooking chamber, such probe systems present a number of challenges. On one hand, the antenna may obstruct the cooking space if the antenna is not placed in the extremities of the cooking chamber. On the other hand, if the antenna is placed within the extremities of the cooking chamber, the signal between the wireless temperature probe and the antenna may be obstructed. Further, to extend an antenna into the cooking chamber or oven cavity, tooling modifications for antenna mounting may be required. In addition, by adding an antenna to the oven appliance, part count and cost of the oven appliance is increased. Moreover, as antennas of such probe systems typically extend into the cooking chamber, such antennas may be visible to consumers during access of the cooking chamber, which is an appearance concern for some consumers. Solutions to remove such antennas from view have been accomplished by placing the antenna in or behind a light cover or behind a convection fan cover. Such solutions remove the antenna from view of the consumer, but fail to reduce part count and cost, require tooling modifications, and place obstructing objects between the antenna and the wireless probe.
Accordingly, an appliance having an antenna for a probe system that addresses one or more of the challenges noted above would be useful.